


snake song

by bogbats



Series: parasites [1]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Forgotten Realms
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 14:24:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16934913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bogbats/pseuds/bogbats
Summary: Not all those who wander are lost. How the druid joins the party.





	snake song

Fenwytch hears them coming long before they come into view. Adventurers are like that. They tromp and they chatter along the road, they like to swap stories and poke at everything they pass by so long as it seems interesting or profitable. It’s always easy to tell when adventurers come through.

This group—they’re not quite so loud, they don’t cajole as much as he’s used to. Coiled in the branches of a moss-laden tree, serpentine, Fenwytch patiently waits. Finally he senses them, approaching along the edge of the wide, waxen leaves that divide the beach from the dense jungle. They pass below his tree without stopping, but stall just before passing beyond his sight, at what amounts to little more than a bare patch in the foliage, where sand mixes with springy rot and swamp. He hears one pitch their pack to the side, followed by a second, and then a belated third. 

Camp, then. Fen flickers a forked tongue. 

The tallest among them is an imperious and fierce-looking woman; the other two pale in size and stature compared to her, but they’re still… hm. Actually, he doesn’t know what they are. Strange and ethereal, one. Ghoulish, the other. So he guesses he’d better pay attention. 

They spark a fire. Their conversation is the brief, almost stilted exchange of a group that’s come together for the cause, not the company—he overhears snippets, though, and after two hundred years, Fenwytch is _very_ good at knowing what to listen for. 

See, sometimes adventurers pass through a place like this because it just so happens to be the quickest route from where they were to where they’re headed. These adventurers are easy to pick out, and Fenwytch doesn’t normally bother with them except to show them the way through. Other times, though, places like this _are_ where they’re headed, and then it doesn’t matter to Fen what the group’s like, because if they’re here and they’re looking, then there’s only a handful of things they could be out to find.

Treasure. Relics. Theirs for the taking, no matter whose they might be or who might have been tasked with guarding them.

He still feels a little flicker of disappointment every time.

Just a little one.

He slithers his weight from the branch and drops to the jungle floor, straightening up on two legs as soon as he’s touched the ground. The scales take a moment longer to recede, and Fenwytch turns his hands over and over and tugs on his sleeves until they have, humming softly. Then he dusts his hands on his cheeks, musses his hair just so. He can hear the group falling into easier conversation, now, gathered around the wild woman’s campfire—billowing a healthy gray smoke. He’s got to admit, it smells good.

Once he’s sure he looks nothing less than elfin again, he stretches and adopts a vague that-a-way wander, letting twigs snap underfoot and the jungle murmur around him, so that by the time he steps out onto the path and into the heat of their camp, every face is turned towards him.

“Oh, hey,” he laughs then, haltingly, eyes wide and smile wider, and he brings a hand to rub his dirt-smeared nose. “I seriously was starting to think I wasn’t gonna run into anyone else out here. Sorry, uh, do you mind if I sit?—I kinda got turned around, in the, uh, jungle, y’know.”

“Where did you _mean_ to find yourself?” the wild woman asks him, but she gestures him nearer anyway.

“The… desert,” he says vaguely. Laughs again, and settles into a squat beside the one with the drowned-dark eyes. “I guess that’s more than ‘kinda’ turned around, huh? Well. You know how it is…”

And just like that, they believe him.

Adventurers always do.


End file.
